Sustainability assessment of electricity market models in selected developed world countries

The paper focuses on the impact of electricity market opening on sustainability of electricity market models. The paper aims to identify what electricity market organization models are the best ones based on the established sustainability criteria. The sustainability criteria include the main sustainability aspects of power sector (economic, social, and environmental). The methodology has been designed to evaluate organisational models of electricity market, which allows performing an extensive evaluation, encompassing all aspects of sustainable development. The evaluation methodology, which has been designed for the evaluation of energy market organisation model, provides the basis for the identification of indicators that have the most significant impact on sustainability; also it lays down the premise for the establishment of critical values and possible changes and the analysis of reasons for the changes in sustainability. The paper applies developed model for sustainability assessment of electricity market models in several world countries having different electricity market organisation structures. The selection of 12 developed world countries (11 of them are OECD countries) from various continents was made based on availability of fully liberalized electricity markets in these countries. The proposed assessment allows to review and compare electricity market models in terms of achieving main targets of sustainable power sector development.